‘Never fuel an angry man’s posture. He’s tough, as you say. He also needs us, vitally. And,’ De Groote smirked at the phone, ‘we know his weakness’.
‘Don’t burn him, Professor,’ his Australian leader advised.
A south-westerly whipped up the broad Derwent River estuary, cooling a hot Friday. It jostled Pike’s rented Ford as he crossed the Tasman Bridge into central Hobart, capital of the island state of half a million residents.
Mount Wellington was a black silhouette over the city. A great, ragged log in an orange fire of sunset. Snow up there was months away. Tasmania’s winter would not be so cold and grey, nor so polluted, he reflected gladly, as what he had left in Europe. It was good to be back.
A Friday crowd was chattering and glowing in classy evening wear as he was shown to the window-side table De Groote had reserved in the restaurant high over the estuary and city. The smell of garlic reminded him of their hosts in Moravia.
A shower, shave and change at Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport into a blue suit that needed pressing had only slightly eased Pike’s exhaustion. His eyes felt rusty. The silk tie Alex had bought him at Bangkok’s airport felt jaunty. ‘Your Thailand tie,’ she had joked.
He spotted Richard’s twelve-metre cabin cruiser, coyly named Argo, moored to a jetty eighty metres below. He recalled boisterous, boozy cruises on it with local network leaders.
Tonight, in the power game, B Pike was determined to prevail.
What did his leader stand to lose if Prague fell in a heap? Pike’s arithmetic being so atrocious, it was Alex the mathematics teacher who had calculated that Argo was returning Richard some $380,000 a year. More than the state Premier earned. It was ten times the Pikes’ profits so far, after Richard and other Argo seniors like Jerry Bell took their cut.
Bell, they understood, was netting a million a year. Abe Harbeck, Grand Platinum, orchestrating from New York City, was rumoured to be cleaning up a million a week. Argo heavies never revealed how they earned it all. Even openly talking about that was called cross-lining, putting in the know the sheep they fleeced.
He yearned acutely for the time and money to share with Pru and Peter. To try to assuage the black shadow of guilt that shamed him so suddenly now as he thought of his two children back in Sydney. He had rung their divorcee mother Elizabeth’s number from the airport before calling Richard. No answer. They still had no answering machine, dammit.
A few years after their marriage in Sydney, Liz had become angry about Blarney coming home drunk a couple of nights a week after sessions at clubs and pubs with fellow journalists. It had prompted her affair with the company director for whom she was the receptionist. Blarney’s learning of that had sparked the divorce.
Pike abominated Argo’s brain washing and social engineering, which was on a scale that would hearten Hitler.
As a waiter delivered the bottle of non-alcohol cider he had ordered, the loudspeaker above him crackled. Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm stridently broke his reverie: Who wants to be a millionaire? I don’t. And go to every swell affair? I don’t…
This had to be organised by puppeteer De Groote! They had sung that song over and over at the late-night celebration at the Pike home after their first open pitch meeting at the Stanley Town Hall. Richard, dressed like a grazier, had played the canny congregation with flair and wit.
That, and the maestro’s glowing edification of Alex Dvorak and Blarney Pike, had scored a clamouring twenty-four recruits, with more about to commit.
Back at the Pike home early in the celebrations, Richard had said their success was awesome—the Pikes’ first of many awesomes from him. Over a rivulet of champagne and later claret, he had bragged and fantasised to a core of recruits until the stormy dawn. Singing that song. Changing it to I do!
Pike had woken after the celebration with a headache, his mouth like a bag of dried fish bait. Alex had clattered dishes in the kitchen. He ruefully recalled looking out at the Nut; the freak monolith, sheer and dark and looming over his home. Perched precariously at the edge of the precipice was a lump of basalt as big as the bedroom.
He called it Brinky Bill. It began to fall towards him. It took him a bewildered half minute to realise the clouds were rushing north, over the Nut. Brinky Bill was not crashing south, to demolish him and the house.
CHAPTER 5
His part of the restaurant had rotated around its core to the elevator as Richard De Groote strode from it. His timing was flawless; 8.05, ten minutes after Pike. Diners and staff stared, as if royalty had arrived.
A customary red rose bud decorated his grey suit. Australian Merino, no doubt, Pike mused, tailored in Italy. De Groote’s generous blond mane was swept back to the collar. Pike already felt a lesser being. They embraced warmly.
‘Hail the conquering hero!’ De Groote beamed. ‘How many millions have you made lately, Blarney?’ The group at the next table gawked.
‘Oh, just a few,’ Pike countered, grinning effacingly at the onlookers. ‘You’re looking well, fearless leader.’
At forty-six, De Groote had thirteen years on Pike but looked about the same age. He was big-boned and muscled, a head shorter and less sturdy than Pike.
‘Must be our vitamin program,’ De Groote smiled. Selling, selling. ‘And go to every swell affair,’ he sang with Sinatra.
‘The song’s a thoughtful touch, you old showman. Smoother than the Stanley Mixed Choir at my place after your show at the town hall.’
De Groote ordered a bottle of riesling. ‘Join me?’
‘No, thanks, Richard. I’m driving to Stanley tonight. This tarted-up apple juice is a lusty little number. Non-alcoholic.’
‘You’re on the wagon then?’ De Groote asked earnestly.
‘I’ve had a few grogs lately. Jack’s death didn’t help.’ Not even a frown. ‘And I couldn’t resist the overwhelming hospitality of Alex’s family at Christmas time. I weakened in Petrov, their little village in Moravia. The folk there make plonk fit for the gods. They call the best stuff altar wine, which doesn’t get to priests.’
…Who wants to wallow in champagne? I don’t, ’cause all I want is yooo. The song ended. The Vienna Strings took over.
‘Their hospitality is marvellous,’ Pike persisted. ‘We set up a little downline there. They’re looking forward to seeing you.’
De Groote picked up the menu. He was not interested in Czech hick villagers.
Pike prepared a salvo. He lowered his voice so it did not carry to the next table. ‘Even in thriving little Petrov, they said our stuff was too costly.’
De Groote interrupted tersely. ‘If people can’t afford the hundred-dollar starter kit and buy twice that value in initial product, you don’t want them in your network. They’re clutter.’
Pike ignored it. ‘We were clobbered again just before the national opening date when the prices our recruits pay for products jumped by thirty percent overnight.
‘It was a disaster!’ Pike pressed. ‘People we’d recruited reckoned we’d conned them. A few demanded their money back. I gave it to them, of course. They left, probably to bad-mouth us.’
De Groote looked unmoved. ‘You shouldn’t do that. Giving money back to them is a violation of the system.’
Prod him harder. ‘What a time for a price hike! Some people around the Republic couldn’t